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As then there is a Life-Form primal- which therefore is the
Life-Form Absolute- and there is Intellectual-Principle or Being,
Authentic Being, these, we affirm, contain all living things and
all Number, and Absolute Justice and Beauty and all of that
order; for we ascribe an existence of their own to Absolute Man,
Absolute Number, Absolute Justice. It remains to discover, in so
far as such knowledge is possible, how these distinct entities
come to be and what is the manner of their being.
At the outset we must lay aside all sense-perception; by
Intellectual-Principle we know Intellectual-Principle. We reflect
within ourselves there is life, there is intellect, not in
extension but as power without magnitude, issue of Authentic
Being which is power self-existing, no vacuity but a thing most
living and intellective- nothing more living, more intelligent,
more real- and producing its effect by contact and in the ratio
of the contact, closely to the close, more remotely to the
remote. If Being is to be sought, then most be sought is Being at
its intensest; so too the intensest of Intellect if the
Intellectual act has worth; and so, too, of Life.
First, then, we take Being as first in order; then
Intellectual-Principle; then the Living-Form considered as
containing all things: Intellectual-Principle, as the Act of Real
Being, is a second.
Thus it is clear that Number cannot be dependent upon the
Living-Form since unity and duality existed before that; nor does
it rise in the Intellectual-Principle since before that there
existed Real Being which is both one and numerous.
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